Here’s a little advice for you: check your vehicle’s height before entering a multi-storey carpark – you know, in case it’s grown… You might end up peeling your new roofracks off like the top of a sardine can. For example.
Not that anything like that has ever happened to me, mind. Oh, no. It’s not like I drove The Star Wagon into a car park that I’d been in a hundred times before and totally forgot about the roof racks my husband had recently installed and subsequently found myself in a predicament a little like Winnie-The-Pooh’s when he got stuck in Rabbit’s hole. (Uh, that’d be the entrance to Rabbit’s house, people. Sheesh!). And it’s not like the sound of metal against concrete is imprinted forever more on my brain or that I blushed so deeply that four days later I’d still be glowing a deep shade of Amaranth. No. None of that.
Anyway, the point is that if something like that did happen to me, I’d really hope that there was a really nice man working in the little booth at the exit boom gate to help me get ‘unstuck’. And I’d hope this man wouldn’t get even a tiny bit flustered by the growing queue of cars in both directions and that he would remain so cheerful and friendly that I’d feel compelled to go and buy him a box of chocolates to express some small part of my gratitude. Such a man – were he to exist, of course – would forever have a special place in my heart.
I’d also like to think that had these events happened on my watch, that I would have remained calm and collected and not, say, started howling like a baby and alarm my three year old so much that he, too, would burst into tears, saying “Mummy! I’s crying ’cause you broked the car!!”. And it goes without saying that if I were to ring my husband under such circumstances that I would like to have had (but probably wouldn’t have had) the forethought to stress that “We’re okay. Nobody’s hurt!” before incoherently sobbing “Aruunnnnghhhhhhhh sorrrrrrrrrrrrry! The caarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” for two minutes so that I could’ve saved my husband from almost having a Fart Plus Occasion in his pants.
Anyway, if – and only if – any of this had happened to me, I’d also like to hope that the car would mostly be okay and that any damage incurred would look kind of cool, like it had taken some serious heat in a bank-heist-gone-wrong. A bit like this, for example:
Gangstaaaaaaaa!
And I’d certainly hope that my husband would later admit that he would’ve forgotten about the roof racks and done exactly the same thing, but then he’d probably immediately request I didn’t include that in any blog post that I might write about the incident because he wouldn’t like people to think he was a complete idiot.
Luckily none of the above happened to me or my car. Because do you honestly think I’d put it in a blog post if it did?
Not Drowning, Mothering. 